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30-03-2024, 02:33 PM
Ashish Kumar Was a Top PSLE Scorer. Now, He’s a 31-Year-Old Retiree.
All Images by Xue Qi Ow Yeong for RICE Media
With an e-reader and headphones in one hand, Ashish Xiangyi Kumar strolls into a cafe at Woodlands MRT station on a Friday morning.
Beyond the sparsely occupied tables and the gentle morning sunlight filtering through lies the bustling walkway outside the café, teeming with the rhythm of morning traffic. Singaporean commuters, clad in office attire and engrossed in their phones, hurriedly make their way towards nearby MRT gantries.
Slightly over a month ago, Ashish was part of the morning rush hour.
Back then, he would have embarked on an hour’s train journey to the Ministry of Communications and Information (MCI) at Clarke Quay, where he was a Senior Manager at the MCI’s Digital Strategy Office.
That was, until he retired on February 13 this year. At the age of 31.
Ashish Xiangyi Kumar has so much time that he could spend an entire day with the RICE team on a shoot.
“I retired because life is brutally and hilariously short, and I can’t find it in me to spend a second of it doing something other than what I love,” Ashish, the early retiree, remarks bluntly.
He has always been uninterested in the conventional life of a working adult. In contrast to so many of his peers, Ashish is indifferent about moving up the career ladder. He was intrigued—and increasingly disturbed—by the idea that we spend so much of our time at work instead of pursuing our interests.
He lays it all out with the typical self-assuredness of a seasoned orator.
I learn why. In 2015, still a student at the University of Cambridge, he was crowned the best speaker at the World Universities Debating Championship.
Two years later, he found himself at his first job in the civil service—a role as Country Officer at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) headquarters.
His work involved receiving information from Singapore’s foreign missions and “putting it in a form useful for Singapore’s policymakers.” Sometimes, it involved logistics and event organisation—making sure that name plates for visitors were printed correctly or a motorcade was lined up in the right order, for instance.
“In my last few postings, I was objectively having a great time. Very, very interesting work. Fantastic bosses and co-workers. But it didn’t make the feeling [about work] go away,” he explains, settling into his seat.
“Never at any point in my life have I looked at an adult working in a conventional job and thought, ‘Oh, that looks interesting.’ I’ve never had any interest in or attraction to that.”
https://www.ricemedia.co/ashish-kumar-wa...w-retiree/
All Images by Xue Qi Ow Yeong for RICE Media
With an e-reader and headphones in one hand, Ashish Xiangyi Kumar strolls into a cafe at Woodlands MRT station on a Friday morning.
Beyond the sparsely occupied tables and the gentle morning sunlight filtering through lies the bustling walkway outside the café, teeming with the rhythm of morning traffic. Singaporean commuters, clad in office attire and engrossed in their phones, hurriedly make their way towards nearby MRT gantries.
Slightly over a month ago, Ashish was part of the morning rush hour.
Back then, he would have embarked on an hour’s train journey to the Ministry of Communications and Information (MCI) at Clarke Quay, where he was a Senior Manager at the MCI’s Digital Strategy Office.
That was, until he retired on February 13 this year. At the age of 31.
Ashish Xiangyi Kumar has so much time that he could spend an entire day with the RICE team on a shoot.
“I retired because life is brutally and hilariously short, and I can’t find it in me to spend a second of it doing something other than what I love,” Ashish, the early retiree, remarks bluntly.
He has always been uninterested in the conventional life of a working adult. In contrast to so many of his peers, Ashish is indifferent about moving up the career ladder. He was intrigued—and increasingly disturbed—by the idea that we spend so much of our time at work instead of pursuing our interests.
He lays it all out with the typical self-assuredness of a seasoned orator.
I learn why. In 2015, still a student at the University of Cambridge, he was crowned the best speaker at the World Universities Debating Championship.
Two years later, he found himself at his first job in the civil service—a role as Country Officer at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) headquarters.
His work involved receiving information from Singapore’s foreign missions and “putting it in a form useful for Singapore’s policymakers.” Sometimes, it involved logistics and event organisation—making sure that name plates for visitors were printed correctly or a motorcade was lined up in the right order, for instance.
“In my last few postings, I was objectively having a great time. Very, very interesting work. Fantastic bosses and co-workers. But it didn’t make the feeling [about work] go away,” he explains, settling into his seat.
“Never at any point in my life have I looked at an adult working in a conventional job and thought, ‘Oh, that looks interesting.’ I’ve never had any interest in or attraction to that.”
https://www.ricemedia.co/ashish-kumar-wa...w-retiree/
I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
